I’ve never liked visiting the morgue. Dead people give me the creeps.
I stood next to Virginia Bryght as the pathologist unlocked the drawer. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Here goes.”
He turned the handle, opened the door, and slowly slid the drawer back. A body lay covered in a stiff white sheet.
The pathologist—his name was Dr. Stans, an African American man with round glasses—reached for the top of the sheet. “Okay?”
Mrs. Bryght nodded. She was in her late 30s, skinny, with short blond hair and bloodshot eyes.
Dr. Stans slowly tugged the sheet back.
First the head. Part of the head, at least. A plastic cap covered the skull and half his face. Some kind of ocular implant sagged from his right eye.
The right side of the body below was a machine.
More metal covered his shoulder, and his right arm. And his hip and right leg. At least as far as Dr. Stans was willing to pull the sheet down.
A small scar curved along his chin. He wore cargo pants and a boot, and a black T-shirt. A gold earring in his left earlobe.
Mrs. Bryght sighed. “Yes. That’s my husband. Eddie.”
I stared at the hardware. “Is that stuff real?”
He shrugged. “As far as I can tell. I’m not an engineer or anything, but there’s real mechanical stuff there. Not just a cosplay.”
I pulled out my phone. “May I?”
Dr. Stans looked at Mrs. Bryght. “I shouldn’t, but . . .”
After a moment, she nodded.
The door opened behind us as I snapped some photos. A tall Latino man in a long black jacket stepped inside. He reached into a pocket and flashed a badge. “Detective Delgado, CPD. What’s going on here? You’re not supposed to allow—”
“Damn it!” Virginia Bryght stomped a foot. “I told you, I don’t want the police involved in this! He wasn’t shot, they just found him . . . found him . . .” She choked back tears.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” Stans shrugged. “It’s the kind of thing I have to report.”
Delgado pushed me away, then stared at the body. “What is this?”
“As far as I can tell?” Stans started pulling the sheet back up. “It’s some kind of a cyborg. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I mean, yeah, I’ve seen lots of stuff—hip replacements, shoulders, knees—but this isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen. A full body—or a half-body—replacement?” He shook his head.
Delgado looked at me. “And what the hell are you doing here, Jurgen?”
I’d never met him before, as far as I could remember, but lots of cops know me—for better or worse. Tom Jurgen, ex-reporter, now a private detective. And I tend to draw all kinds of the wrong cases.
I look across the table. “Mrs. Bryght is my client.”
She nodded.
“How did he die?” Delgado crossed his arms.
Stans shoved the body back inside the drawer. “We haven’t done a full autopsy yet. Because of all the uh, hardware. It looks like the heart gave out, maybe because of the strain of the mechanical implants. So, not homicide.” He looked at Delgado. “Okay?”
“Still makes it our business.” He glared at me. “Okay, Jurgen. Take a look. Keep it quiet. But keep me informed.” He reached into a pocket and shoved a card at me. Then he shot a glance at Dr. Stans. “Don’t show that to anyone.”
“But . . .” He looked at Virginia Bryght. “Ma’am?”
She shuddered. “That’s fine. For now.” She rubbed her hands and looked at me. “Can we talk?”
We sat in the hospital cafeteria. It was 2:30 p.m. or so. I drank coffee. She dropped a teabag into a cup of hot water.
“They called me.” Her voice was quiet. Controlled. “They found him in an alley somewhere in Chicago. I had to come in and—identify him.”
“He had an ID with him?”
She shook her head. “Three months ago they found our car in a ditch. Midnight, about halfway home from work. It was wrecked. Totaled. Airbag exploded. But no Eddie. I did a missing persons report, but nothing happened. They thought he’d faked the accident and just left. But Eddie wouldn’t . . .” She sipped her tea. “I guess they thought he fit when they, uh—found him. The scar on his chin, his earring. They described him to me. Even the, uh—stuff. It sounded . . . satanic.” She bit her lip.
I sipped my coffee. “So you called me.”
“I started looking around for private detectives when the police stopped looking after a few days. They were nice, but . . .” She bit her lip. “Then when they called me and told me what he—what happened, you know, what he looked like? Then I remembered that it looked like you take—” She glanced around the cafeteria.
One family was laughing. Another kept their heads down, talking in quiet whispers.
I nodded. Monsters, vampires, psychic phenomena. It’s my niche, apparently. “Unusual cases. I get that a lot.”
Virginia Bryght rubbed her face, fighting back tears. “I don’t trust the police. They stopped looking for him. Is that bad?”
“There are some I trust. I’ve never met Delgado.”
“Anyway, can you . . . help me?”
“I’ll try.” I wasn’t sure where to start. “What does your husband do for a living?”
“Eddie’s a security guard.” She sniffed. “Was, I guess. Goddamn it.” She blew her nose on a napkin. “I’m sorry. It was G17 Security. He was in the Army, an MP. He tried to be a cop, but he flunked the exam. But he was okay with security work. He wasn’t a jerk about it.”
She tossed the napkin away. “He was going to take the exam again. He was studying. He would have passed. Maybe not in Chicago, but in the suburbs. I mean, we live in Elmhurst.” She grabbed another napkin. “It’s just, they found him here, in an alley somewhere, and they called me . . . sorry.”
She leaned down sobbing. I had to wait, wishing for something to say.
Then she leaned back. “I just don’t understand.”
“Right.” I folded my arms. “You said you didn’t want the police involved?”
“They don’t care about him!” She pounded a fist on the table. “They just sent an email when he flunked the exam! That guy, that guy Delgado? He doesn’t care! He just wants to keep it covered up! That’s all they ever want!”
The quiet couple glanced over at us.
Okay. Maybe she was a conspiracy theorist or something. But she had a right to be confused. And angry.
I finished my coffee. “Fine. I’ll look into it as best as I can. We have to, uh, discuss some details—”
She yanked a checkbook from her back pocket. “How much to start?”
Dr. Stans reluctantly agreed to another viewing of the body after Virginia Bryght talked to him to okay it. “You ready?”
“Go ahead.” It was Rachel. My girlfriend. She’s got red hair, hazelnut eyes, and vaguely psychic powers. Plus, she’s pretty hot. Although she wasn’t happy about me calling her to come look at a dead body in the morgue. “Why can’t you take me on normal dates?”
She looked around the cold, lifeless room. “Huh. Just like on TV.”
“Not really.” Stans unlocked the drawer. “Sometimes we use video. When people don’t want to be in the same room.”
“This is Dr. Stans. Doctor, this is my associate, Rachel Dunn.” “Associate” sounds so much more professional than “girlfriend.”
“Hi.” He opened the door and pulled back the body. “Let me—”
“No, wait.” Rachel lifted a hand before he could peel the sheet back. “I don’t need to see it. Just let me . . .”
She closed her eyes, arms at her sides. One deep breath. Two.
Then she nodded. “Okay. Close it up.”
Dr. Stans frowned. “What was that?”
“We’ll let you know.” Maybe. “You all right?”
Rachel grabbed my arm. “Let’s go.”
Out in the hall she leaned against a wall. “Yeah, Magic. Mostly tech, but some magic. It’s sort of draining away.”
“They found the body this morning. Maybe whatever animated it is fading.”
Rachel nodded. “Probably. Can we go home now?”
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